I don't feel sorry for cable companies or consumers who have spent the last decade with their heads in the sand. It should come as no surprise to anyone that analog is out and digital is IN. The FCC has succumbed to a few special interest groups and has allowed this conversion process to drag on for far too long already. If the FCC had any backbone they would have enforced their own rules for digital tuners for all new televisions when they had the chance. Remember their original regulations which called for certain percentages of new sets to include ATSC tuners? I can't remember a single case where they actually fined a manufacturer for non-compliance. Had they enforced those rules we wouldn't be talking about the poor cable companies and consumers who feel like 15 years is too short a time period to replace their televisions. We would already be there. Content providers and equipment manufactures should share some of the blame for delaying the inevitable. A good number of us waited to purchase digital sets because of all the confusion about interfaces and formats. Take HDCP out of the picture and we would have jumped on the band wagon a lot sooner.

The fact is, we should have been 100% digital a long time ago. And we would have been if the manufacturers and content providers had voluntarily begun moving towards digital back in the 90's as the FCC requested. It was only because of their refusal to do it voluntarily that the FCC felt compelled to step in and require them to do so.

Now you tell me that the FCC has lost their spine again and that they are going to extend analog out to 2012. UNBELIEVABLE!